Memories of a forgotten and lost childhood

 

By Antonio Jose Rubi,

This August 26 will mark the 18th anniversary of  the last Disney hand drawn sequel, the Little Mermaid III: Ariel's Beginning (2008). This was the last of a series of a Disney sequels since the early 1990s, due to the influence of 3D animation. At the time, I was still a 2 year old toddler still not yet exposed to gadgets, with me only still playing with toys, reading books and listening to nursery rhymes and classical music. I would not have been exposed to gadgets until November of that year.

When Disney fans learned that this was the last sequel to be produced in 2008, as well as when Disney announced in 2013 that hand drawn animation was to be purged, this was a great tragedy. Many quit being Disney fans, and instead focused on the good old days of children's illustrations, some to the 1950s and 70s, while others to a hundred years earlier, during the late Victorian and early Edwardian eras.

For me, this was a loss of the innocence that Walter Elias Disney had gave to the world. Walt Disney wanted to entertain children and give them happiness, but his successors abused his legacy, prioritizing commercialization and money to the entertainment of children and innocent nostalgia.

And continuing on further, as a traditionalist classicist and a Traditionalist Catholic myself, I could see in the sequels that despite the animation style being ''traditional'', the story was itself modernist. Unlike the good old days stories, which featured good morals, the Disney sequels did the opposite. It prioritized the ''Follow your heart'' and the disobedience of parents, for example, Melody disobeys her mother Ariel to run to the sea. If a centenarian at the time who grew up with classical stories of the Victorian era were to see the films, they would condemn it as a mockery and distortion of their childhood stories.

I can compare the fall of the old Disney to the fall of the Russian Empire, which is one of the Empires I also have nostalgia for. I can compare the purge of sequels with the February Revolution which deposed the Tsar and installed Kerensky and the Provisional Government, and that of Disney purging hand drawn animation with that of the Bolsheviks and Lenin seizing power, and the nostalgic Disney fans with the White emigres. Both sides saw the fall of a golden age, and all what remains was driven by nostalgia.

From a Filipino perspective, since I am here in Cebu, I would say that Filipinos should not depend on foreign princesses who only care about money, but about their own folk heroes and heroines who only care about serving the people.

As a young adult who takes his inspiration from Disney, I like to draw my own original legends and characters to fit what is called a ''Marvelous childhood'', compared to the modernist cartoons being promoted by companies today.

Professor Plinio de Oliveira of Brazil, once said  on having a state of innocence like the classic stories:

Innocence is not a privilege of childhood, but can be maintained until the end of one's life. For all men have in the depths of their spirits the model ideal of all things. And, if they have not committed revolutionary infidelities against the order established by God in Creation, they are able to find these ideal models in themselves. With these models, it is not so difficult to achieve the inner harmony of soul that characterizes innocence. 

I would like to end with the last stanza of How Glorious is Our Lord in Zion, a hymn of the Russian Empire, that was used by White Russians mourning the fall of Russia to the Bolsheviks, but also can apply to a childhood nostalgic memory:

Oh God, let our voices enter thy dwelling,

And let our tender sense

Rise to thee like the morning dew!

For thee with heart we'll raise an altar,

For thee we sing and glorifying!